On Bauer’s Top 100 Restaurants
Michael Bauer, the San Francisco Chronicle’s influential restaurant critic, is out with his Top 100 Restaurants list for 2016. A close reading of it provides some glimpses into dining and other...
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Loco’l: A review
Daniel Patterson’s first attempt at this Oakland space (2214 Broadway), which he called Plum—located at ground zero of the city’s hot Uptown District–was a failure. Plum just didn’t work for Oakland....
View ArticleAu revoir to the oversized wine list
Hasn’t the day of the bloated wine list come, and gone? How many wines do diners need to “peruse” on a list anyway? Obviously, there’s no correct answer, so I can only speak for myself. I,...
View ArticleOlder wine in restaurants? Not worth the risk
Somm Journal executive editor David Gadd asks the pertinent question of what to do when you let a sommelier hand-sell you a glass of older wine, and when you taste it, it’s over the hill. I say the...
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What to expect when you pay hundreds of dollars for dinner—and why you do it
How much money is too much money for a multi-course dinner at one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s top restaurants? That’s what the San Francisco Chronicle’s longtime restaurant critic, Michael Bauer,...
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A wine from my cellar, plus Bordeaux at a Basque restaurant
A few nights ago I pulled the Charles Krug 2008 Vintage Selection Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley), which cost $75 on release. The color was still as inky dark as a young Cabernet, but after almost...
View ArticleRestaurant review: Zuni Café, San Francisco
I like to think that if I’d had lunch last Tuesday at “Yuni” Café, I would have marveled at the food anyway. But this wasn’t Yuni Café, it was Zuni Cafe. Now in its fortieth year in the mid-Market...
View ArticlePinotFest 2019: Reviews and an Appreciation
You can take the boy out of the wine critic business, but you can’t take wine criticism out of the boy…or something like that. All of which is to say that, although I’ve been happily retired for...
View ArticleCOVID-19 and Restaurants
Maxine, Marilyn, Keith and I have developed a dining ritual of sorts over the last 8 or 9 years: we go to Waterbar, the seafood restaurant on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, underneath the Bay Bridge,...
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